Monday, January 25, 2016

Living Christian in a Gay World, part 3 - Living Out the Gospel

Part 3 – Living Out the Gospel

Luke 4:14-19

Introduction

This is the third of four messages on
homosexuality.All the previous messages
for this series are posted here on my blog.You can look at previous posts if you missed a message or
if you would like to share it with someone else.It has been very challenging to preach this
series, because it’s a very sensitive subject for many people.My sincerest hope is to speak the Truth in
Love.

My message last week was especially
difficult for some to hear because it points out the ways the Bible clearly
marks the practice of homosexuality as a sin.The Gospel (or Good News) of Jesus is sometimes hard to hear.However, never forget that it is indeed Good
News.

The
goal of my message todayis to
explain how Christians should live out the Gospel in a world with mixed up
views about homosexuality.Let’s
start by reading Jesus’ calling to bring Good News to all humanity.

Luke 4:14-19

14 Then
Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about
him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was
praised by everyone.

16 When he
came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the
synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah
the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where
this was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for
he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim that
captives will be released, that
the blind will see,that the oppressed will be set free,19 and
that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

Good News

Throughout
the New Testament, Jesus’ message is called the Gospel, which translates “Good
News.”The very names of the four books about
Jesus’ life are called the Gospels.The
Gospel of Matthew tells us Jesus traveled around “…announcing the Good News
about the Kingdom.” (Matthew 4:23)The
book of Mark begins by saying, “This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah,
the Son of God.”We just read in Luke
4:18 that Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed
me to bring Good News to the poor.”

It
is indeed Good News that Jesus came
to save the world.For when we were yet
sinners, Jesus came to forgive us and lift us out of our sin.Sam Allberry, an ordained pastor in the
Anglican Church who struggles with same-sex attraction, put it this way in his
book Is God anti-gay?He said,
“The Christian message is the best news anyone can ever hope to hear.It’s all about a God who is more forgiving
and loving than we could possibly imagine.”And yet, Allberry understands the Good News of Jesus Christ compels him
to refrain from acting upon his attraction to people of the same-sex. [Click Here to find out more about Sam Allberry. Click Here to find out about his book Is God anti-gay?]

The Bad News

The
Good News of Christ inevitable reveals there is also some bad news.If Jesus came to save us, he must have come
to save us from something.Our Luke passage said Jesus came to bring
Good News to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, etc.The bad news is poverty, captivity,
blindness, and many other troubles caused by sin are part of the human
condition.

The corrupted nature of humanity
reveals itself in numerous ways and everyone is affected. We lie. We cheat. We
steal.We may also experience physical
malfunctions.I have a tendency to eat
too much and that tendency can have dire consequences for my health.Others have trouble controlling their tongue
or are prone to addiction or suffer from mental illness or emotional troubles.

Sometimes
the consequences of sin in our world are completely out of our control.For instance, a child is born blind.Neither the child nor his parents did
anything wrong to cause the blindness, yet the child is born blind because sin
has corrupted the very nature of our world.This was not God’s will.God’s
will is for everyone to be perfect and whole.Yet sin has distorted God’s original plan.

People
argue about whether homosexuality is a choice or whether people are born that
way.In the context of the Gospel, it
doesn’t matter.We know that we are all
born with many kinds of troubles.I want
to eat too much.Another is born
blind.Yet another is born with an
attraction to people of the same sex.One is not worse than the other in God’s eyes.They are all consequences of the same sin-sickness
that infects our world.

The
consequences of sin are very serious when we consider it in these broader
terms.And our horrible, hopeless
situation reveals how desperately we need salvation.That is why it is such incredibly Good News
that Jesus came to save us.

When we read the 4 Gospels, we see sickness, sin,
demons, ignorance and walls of division being destroyed as a sign of God’s
Kingdom breaking into our world.And
Jesus invites all who will to come be part of the Kingdom.His message was and is "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is near."[i]

He said
repent, because we cannot bring our sin with us into God’s Kingdom. It doesn't
matter what the sin is: whether it be hypocrisy or homosexuality, lying or
lusting, gossip or greed, we must die to these and all selfishness with the
help of Christ. Sometimes we will find complete healing from our sins in our
lifetime. Sometimes we will continue to struggle for a long time, but the Good
News is there is forgiveness and grace in Christ Jesus. He understands our
weakness and his strength is sufficient to help us endure.Ultimately, we will be made perfect.

It’s Not Picking and Choosing

Some
argue Christians just pick and choose which sins in the Old Testament Law apply
today.A couple friends of mine
commented on Facebook about my message last week.They rightly pointed out that the same Old
Testament that forbids homosexuality, forbids eating pork, also endorses
slavery, and stipulates many other disturbing
regulations.Are we just picking and
choosing what we want to believe?

Definitely
not. This line of reasoning misunderstands the power of the Gospel. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection fulfilled the law and ushered in a new era of God’s grace, changing the way we apply the laws of the Old Testament[ii]. The Old Testament laws break down
into certain categories and we can see how the Gospel affected each category:

Cleanliness laws. (Don’t touch lepers or eat pork, etc.)Jesus declared all foods
clean (Mark 7:19) and also touched lepers and dead bodies, and was not made
unclean by doing so. Thus, Jesus ended the cleanliness and food
laws of the Old Testament. (Yeah!We can all enjoy our pork BBQ and bacon!)

Worship/Sacrificial
Laws.(Sacrifices, circumcision,
etc.)Jesus taught his body was the true
Temple and his death was the ultimate sacrifice for sin (John 2:21, Mark
14:36). Thus, his death opened the way for us to approach God, making Old
Testament regulations concerning the Temple and its sacrificial system
obsolete.

Civil
Laws. (Laws about slavery and stoning, etc.)In the Old Testament, the people of God
were the nation-state of Israel.In the
New Testament, Jesus reconstituted the people of God so they are a universal Church
embodied in numerous local gatherings around the world and subject to the laws
of secular governments. The Old Testament laws relating to the civic life of Israel
(such as requiring the death penalty for grave sins) no longer apply to
believers today in the same way as they did in the Old Testament.

Moral
Laws.(The 10 Commandments,
sexual ethics, etc.)The purpose of the
moral laws is to show us our sins so we know how much we need Christ.Also, they teach us how to act in love
towards our neighbors.Jesus fulfilled
the moral requirements of the Law to perfection since we couldn’t, but he also
restated many of the moral laws and said we should follow them—including the
sexual ethic of the Old Testament.These
moral laws are also restated by other New Testament writers so they still apply
to us today.[iii]

So if you look closely, you will see we are not being
inconsistent—picking and choosing which laws we like and don’t like.We are simply living out a new reality
brought on by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Click Here for a blog by Rev. Brent White with more about the "picking and choosing" debate.]

Reaching Out

The
Good News is for everybody.The church
is called to be in ministry to all people.Jesus didn’t come to save people who are already OK (or think they are
already holy).Jesus came to seek and
save the lost.He came to heal those who
are spiritually sick; this includes people who struggle with all kinds of
sin—including homosexuality.But how do
we reach out to people struggling with homosexuality?

First of all make it easy to talk about.

Keeping
quiet about a taboo subject like homosexuality (or any sexual sin) only
promotes secrets, isolation, and darkness where sin and suffering grow and
fester.Sadly, sometimes the last person
someone struggling with homosexuality feels comfortable talking to is a
Christian.There are
plenty of people in our world today who will tell them there
is nothing wrong with practicing homosexuality, but it is not helpful just to
be told what you want to hear or what sounds good.What we all need is unconditional love and biblical truth.

People
struggling with same-sex attraction (or any kind of sin) need to know it is
safe and encouraged to talk about our problems and struggles with loving
Christians.Therefore, live the kind of
life that lets people know they can come and talk to you about anything,
knowing you will be honest and caring, and will still love them no matter
what.

Along
with this, you need to be careful how you talk about homosexuality.Realize
that people are listening to everything you say and the way you say it.The careless things we say can have
unintended consequences.How would it
sound to a teenage boy who is struggling with homosexuality if he hears his
football coach joking about gay people or telling another player he tackles
“like a girl”?How would the angry,
politically charged article condemning “gay rights” you share on Facebook be
perceived by someone who is struggling with homosexuality?How would someone feel if they overhear you
talking about homosexuality as if it were the worst possible sin anyone could
commit (which it isn’t)?They’re
probably not going to trust you with their struggle.That doesn’t mean we disengage on the issue,
but it does mean we must be thoughtful and loving and careful in how we engage.

If
someone opens up to you about their struggles, recognize how much courage it
took them to speak up.Be sure to thank
them for trusting you.It is truly an
honor for someone to open up to you about something so sensitive.Be sure to protect their trust by keeping a
confidence.Pray with them.Be truthful (as best you understand truth),
but always be loving.

Get rid of unhealthy stereotypes.

If
you want to be helpful on the issue of homosexuality, try to deal with biblical
models of masculinity and femininity, rather than cultural stereotypes.Be considerate in how you talk about
others.Learn to recognize and promote
true, biblical values about what it means to be a man or a woman.Discard the false images that the
non-Christian world promotes and that sometimes creep into our churches.What does it really mean to be a man?What does it really mean to be a woman?The type of person we are sexually attracted
to has very little to do with our masculinity or femininity in a biblical
sense.

Honor Singleness.

Jesus
offered an alternative to heterosexual marriage—singleness.Therefore, people struggling with same-sex
attraction may need to spend long years or even their whole life as single
persons.This can be difficult and
requires the support of the church.Don’t forget special efforts to minister to singles in the midst of all
the couples and family ministries in the life of the church.This is helpful for all single persons,
regardless of why they are single—whether because they have not married yet,
are divorced or widowed, or have chosen not to marry.Always remember that people who remain single
are as important as those who marry and singleness is a highly honorable
condition in the eyes of God.

“But
isn’t it unrealistic and unloving to expect someone to remain single just
because they are attracted to people of the same sex?”No.That
is a message our culture tells us—that you are not healthy or whole unless you
are sexually active and eventually married.But this was not Jesus’s opinion and other New Testament writers also
offered singleness as an honorable and desirable condition for people to
choose.Centuries of devoted Christians
have chosen singleness.Some famous
Christians who remained single were:Jesus, St. Paul, Joan of Arc, Mother Theresa, George Handel, Leonardo de
Vinci, Susan B. Anthony, and Isaac Newton.But it’s not just famous people.We have people in our own churches who have chosen to be single and have
been blessed by it as they have been a blessing to many others.And while singleness has its struggles (so
does marriage by the way), singleness offers great rewards as well.So let us support those who choose to be
single.It is a practical and godly
alternative to marriage.

Be the Family of God.

Remember
that the Church is a family.Be sure to
adopt people who struggle with homosexuality into your church.You—as their church family—may be the only
family they have.You are a precious
gift to them.Make the most of it.Invite them to be with you—especially in
those times when a person normally gathers with family.Sometimes the holidays can be the loneliest
times for single adults.Your friendship
can make all the difference.

Be a Welcoming
Church for Everyone.

People need to know that the
church offers support for those struggling with homosexuality.They should feel comfortable coming to the
church, knowing they can find help with their questions and struggles.They need to know the church wants to and can
help.They need to hear the Good News
that Jesus forgives and loves us no matter what we struggle with.

Conclusion

The
Good News is for you!We all have
sin.We all struggle.Your sin—whatever it is—is no worse than mine
or anyone else’s.We are all in
desperate need of Jesus’ saving love.The Good News is Jesus freely offers salvation to anyone who sincerely
wishes to take hold of it.So there is
no need to be trapped by your guilt.There is no need to pretend like nothing is wrong.The first step in healing is admitting the
problem.So I invite you to come to
Jesus and cry out for help.What he wants
more than anything is to reach out and take your hand and lift you out of
whatever sins you struggle with.Won’t
you come to him?Won’t you trust him?Won’t you let him save you?

Hi! I am a husband to an amazing woman, a father of three awesome kids, and a pastor of a loving church. My goal in life is to glorify God as I draw people closer to Christ with every breath and step I take.

About Me

Hi! I am a husband to an amazing woman, a father of three awesome kids, and a pastor of a loving church. My goal in life is to glorify God as I draw people closer to Christ with every breath and step I take.